PROMOTING NETWORK CIVILITY AT MIT
Crime & Punishment, or the Golden Rule?
GREGORY A JACKSON
DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC COMPUTING
MIT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
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Is there a computer cluster somewhere where someone can be safe
from pornography and harassment? I'm sick of this.
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There was more to the story, of course, although this is the only
direct communication I received from Judy Hamilton (not her real name,
of course). Judy went into an Athena cluster and sat down next to a
male student. His screen was displaying a graphic image of a sexual
act. Judy asked the student to remove the image, since it was
interfering with her ability to work comfortably.
and contentiously. After a shouting match, Judy, feeling intimidated,
left to find someplace else to work. She complained to friends, and to
MIT's Ombudswoman. The Ombudswoman sent her to me.
On its face this case involves a conflict between rights: Judy has a
right to use facilities without interference, the male student has a
right to display whatever images he wishes, and both cannot exercise
their rights without conflict. The conflict arises, in part, because
personal computers in a public cluster are an oxymoron - the user
doesn't know whether to treat them as shared or private. When
different users answer the question differently, conflict ensues.
One approach to problems of this sort, typical of college and
university disciplinary mechanisms, involves judgments and sanctions.
The judgment-and-sanctions approach takes a long time, entails
standards of evidence, and requires answers to difficult questions.
Most people I have told about Judy Hamilton say that she should win,
that her rights outweigh the male student's because the incident
involved public facilities and her goal was learning whereas his was
titillation. But what, for example, if the display had been on a more
personal computer, say a laptop? What if the context had been a
cafeteria, rather than an academic facility? What if the image had
been a swastika, rather than a sexual image? What if the screen had
displayed an anti-Semitic quotation from the published writings of
Harvard's President Lowell (once an MIT faculty member) in large type?
In small type? What if had been a Rubens painting? What if had been a
fraternity's name? What if there were other workstations available,
from which the male student's display could not be seen?
A judgment-and-sanctions approach revisits the problem for each
variation. It creates a stream of acrimonious, difficult-to-decide
cases, consigning policy evolution, social learning, and ethical
progress to the indefinite future. And it leaves administrators
without an efficient, commonsensical response to complaints like
Judy's.
A different approach to problems of this sort frames the issues not in
terms of competing rights, but rather in terms of balancing interests.
Judy and the male student both have an interest in continuing
availability of public facilities, whose existence depends on a social
contract to respect each other as citizens sharing limited common
resources. Each has a right to do things that might offend others. Yet
it is in each of their interests not to exercise that right at all
times, lest their competition jeopardize their common interests by
causing administrators to restrict or eliminate public facilities.
From an interests perspective this problem requires an approach that
helps each citizen to consider the interests of others. A
judgment-and-sanctions approach might serve this end, especially if it
involved the equivalent of public hangings. But we believe there are
more efficient approaches focused on averting and changing
inappropriate behavior rather than punishing it. I will return to this
point, but only after another case.
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My concern is about one M Zareny, who is using his computer account
to post UseNet articles in rec.arts.books and to send messages with
extremely derogatory claims about gay men. Normally I would be most
solidly against censorship, but if similar remarks about the
immorality of Jews or Blacks were made, they would probably be
illegal. I have tried at great length to reason with MZ, but his
prejudices seem to be beyond reason. He was previously using an
account elsewhere before he moved to MIT. As an alumnus, I am
disappointed to see Zareny's trash emanating from alma mater. I
also think that if the hate laws covered gender orientation, he
would be in violation of the law.
Could you please respond to my plea? As I said, I am very
uncomfortable with censorship of any form, but MZ has been going on
for more than three years now, and his views are quite beyond
rational comment. I have suggested that we take the debate to
philosophical journals instead of the Internet (he suggested the
same thing, but shows no signs of doing so, despite my having
published papers on issues underlying the topic), since there are
some established standards there. He has made unsubstantiated
remarks about my character and relations with my students, that if
I were in the US I might consider taking legal action over.
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An easy one, it seemed: find Mr Zareny (again, not his real name), let
him know that continuing to post offensive messages after being asked
to desist might constitute harassment, and warn him that legal action
could result.
But do public postings of this sort constitute harassment, and are
they legally actionable? The second question is murky, and I will duck
it for the moment, but the first depends on an institution's
harassment policy. MIT's policy reads as follows:
Harassment is any conduct, verbal or physical, on or off campus,
which has the intent or effect of unreasonably interfering with an
individual's or group's educational or work performance at MIT or
which creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational,
work or living environment.
In practice we apply three tests to determine whether given behavior
constitutes harassment. We post these questions for all to see on
large posters in all computer clusters:
Is it harassment? Ask yourself these three questions:
* Did the incident cause stress that affected your ability, or the
ability of others, to work or study?
* Was it unwelcome behavior?
* Would a reasonable person of your gender/race/religion subjected
to this behavior find it unacceptable?
Is Mr. Zareny's behavior harassment? On its face, no - at least based
on the data in the complaint. It may satisfy the third test, depending
how closely one defines the reference community. But the alumnus did
not contend that his ability to work was being affected. Moreover, if
Zareny's postings are typical of those in this UseNet group (and a
quick review of rec.arts.books suggests they are), the alumnus might
in effect have invited exposure to the postings by participating in
the newsgroup. The policy basis for telling Mr. Zareny to stop is
tenuous, and the legal threat even more so.
As Nero Wolfe might say, this is unsatisfactory: Mr. Zareny's behavior
clearly is unproductive. It falls short of the standard we would like
MIT students to reach. So we should communicate with him, and let him
know that flaming postings are unlikely to win him friends. A problem
arises: how do we know that Mr. Zareny is in fact making these
postings, and not someone forging his name? Signatures on UseNet
postings are among the most forgeable items on the Internet, and so
the phrasing of admonitions requires some care.
As we pursued this point the case grew interesting: there was no "M
Zareny" at MIT, and none of the usernames in the postings was
registered centrally with us. We discovered that Zareny's postings had
come from a private (although MIT-owned) workstation with a private
user list, and that the workstation's previous user had given Mr.
Zareny, apparently a friend, a local account and remote access to the
machine so he could connect to it by telephone. So the postings were
coming from an unknown individual outside the MIT community, but
through an unofficial account granted some time in the past on a
"private" but MIT-owned workstation by someone since departed. By an
extraordinary coincidence (finding his thesis in an online catalog), I
discovered that Mr. Zareny was in fact a graduate student at a
neighboring university.
The Zareny case, apparently about harassment, thus turns out to be as
much about venue and responsibility. The Internet's accessibility,
lack of authentication standards, and context-bound rules of discourse
produce a jurisdictional and evidentiary morass: an alumnus in
Australia complains to us about comments posted in a world-wide
newsgroup from an MIT computer by an individual with an MIT
electronic-mail address but who apparently is enrolled at another
university. The comments are offensive to the recipient, but typical
of the comments in the newsgroup - in which participation is fully
voluntary. Who has standing to complain to whom, and who has standing
to take action? Whose definition of harassment and/or improper use
should govern - that of MIT, or the other perpetrator's university?
The victim or the newsgroup? US or Australian law? Whose standard of
evidence applies? Of course we shut off Mr. Zareny's unofficial
account - we are perfectly comfortable doing this without any warning
or process whatsoever, since it was unauthorized - but should we do
more?
The cases have some common threads: traditional judicial approaches
are either infeasible or inefficient, framing the issue in terms of
rights leads to conflict, jurisdiction can be messy, and therefore the
central need is for members of electronic communities to appreciate
their common interests in rules for behavior and use.
Within the academic-computing and Athena side of Information Systems
we first approached computer and network misbehavior
idiosyncratically. Students cleaned screens for some offenses, lost
their computer privileges for others, and underwent disciplinary
proceedings for others. As academic computing become more central to
education at MIT, these ad hoc and local approaches became too diffuse
and unmanageable. Moreover, they often triggered acrimonious exchanges
with perpetrators rather than productive behavior changes. And we
became increasingly uncomfortable with our confounded roles as
rulemakers, detectives, prosecutors, judges, and corrections officers.
We discussed this problem among ourselves, and with individuals from
the offices of the Provost, the Dean for Student Affairs, and the
Ombudsman. Out of these discussions grew a recognition that averting
and stopping antisocial and unethical behavior was sometimes more
important than punishing offenders. And out of this recognition grew a
simple set of mechanisms designed to stop harassment and improper use
quickly, while keeping options for more traditional sanctions open.
The stopit mechanisms, as they came to be known, were based on a
simple proposition:
Most offenders, given the opportunity to stop uncivil behavior
without having to admit guilt, will do so.
The stopit mechanisms thus were designed to do two things: to discover
computer misbehavior rapidly, and to communicate effectively with its
perpetrators. The overarching goal is just what the name suggests: to
stop it.
The first stopit mechanism is the poster I described above. The poster
is displayed prominently in all Athena clusters. Facsimiles appear in
printed and online documents. The primary goals of the poster are two:
to encourage victims who feel they are in danger to call Campus Police
immediately, and to provide a clear "if you can't figure out what to
do" path to us.
The second stopit mechanism is that path: the mailing
address. Messages sent to go to the senior directors
in MIT Information Systems involved with academic computing, who then
make sure that users receive responses and that appropriate actions
ensue. Responses to stopit messages are generally very quick,
especially when the offense is great, since the stopits (as the
Director-respondents are known) frequently check their mail.
In many cases the response to a stopit complaint is a standard
response from a specific office: for example, chain-letter and
forged-mail complaints go directly to the network Postmaster, who
takes standard actions (which range from admonitions to personal
meetings depending on the incident). The advantage is, users need not
worry about who should receive their complaints. They simply write to
.
As stopit precedents have accumulated, so have standard responses to
typical offenses. Moreover, field staff have become better attuned to
standard responses, and often are able to handle complaints completely
on the spot. This was very difficult before stopit gathered enough
data to develop, test, and implement response policies. Standard
responses and field-staff skills gradually have reduced the senior
administrative overhead associated with stopit.
The third stopit mechanism is a carefully-structured standard note to
alleged perpetrators of harassment, improper use, or other uncivil
behavior. "Someone using your account," the note begins, "did
[whatever the offense is]." The u.y.a. note (as this mechanism is
known, for its introductory words) then explains why this behavior or
action is offensive, or violates MIT harassment policy, or Rules of
Use, or whatever. "Account holders are responsible for the use of
their accounts. If you were unaware that your account was being used
in this way," the note continues, "it may have been compromised. User
Accounts can help you change your password and re-secure your
account." Detailed directions to User Accounts follow. The note
concludes with a short sentence: "If you were aware that your account
was being used to [whatever it was], then please make sure that this
does not happen again."
Two interesting outcomes ensue. First, many recipients of u.y.a. notes
go to User Accounts, say their accounts have been compromised, and
change their passwords - even when we know, from eyewitnesses or other
evidence, that they personally were the offenders. Second, and most
important, u.y.a. recipients virtually never repeat the offending
behavior.
This is important: even though recipients concede no guilt, and
receive no punishment, they stop. If we had to choose one lesson from
our experience with misbehavior on the MIT network, it is how
effective and efficient u.y.a. letters are. They have drastically
reduced the number of confrontational debates between us and
perpetrators, while at the same time reducing the recurrence of
misbehavior. When we accuse perpetrators directly, they often assert
that their misbehavior was within their rights (which may well be
true). They then repeat the misbehavior to make their point and
challenge our authority. When we let them save face by pretending (if
only to themselves) that they did not do what they did, they tend to
become more responsible citizens with their pride intact. We lose the
satisfaction of seeing perpetrators punished, but we reduce
misbehavior and gain educational effectiveness.
Sometimes, especially where certain kinds of improper use such as
reconfiguring machines or using restricted facilities are involved
(there have been virtually no harassment recidivists), perpetrators
perpetrate again. Or they respond to the u.y.a. letter by contesting
the policy in question. In these cases the fourth stopit mechanism
comes into play: the individual is invited to discuss the matter with
a senior Information Systems administrator. If the individual declines
this invitation, it becomes more forceful: in some cases the user's
account is temporarily frozen until her or she appears (but this only
happens with a Director's approval).
In extreme cases, or if discussion fails to deter future misbehavior,
the fifth stopit mechanism comes into play: the Institute's regular
disciplinary procedures. In contrast to our earlier practice, MIT
Information Systems neither takes private action nor imposes internal
punishments (such as denying accounts, or having offenders clean
screens) outside of regular procedures. Instead, Information Systems
files complaints on behalf of itself or of victims (with their
consent), and then lets the MIT Committee on Discipline (or whatever
organization is responsible) judge the case and impose penalties.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT, OR THE GOLDEN RULE?
Our answer is simple: the Golden Rule. Attempting to reduce uncivil
behavior on the academic network by defining "crimes" and punishing
"criminals" solves only part of the problem, at the same time
prompting enough debate, backtalk, and defiance of authority to wipe
out any gains. Attempting to reduce uncivil behavior by promoting
respect for others sharing resources, and especially by permitting
community members to change their behavior without admitting guilt,
seems to achieve our central goal: maximizing educational efficiency
by reducing the social and ethical costs of intensive academic
networking.
But attaining our goal requires one further step, which we have yet to
take effectively at MIT. Rather than educate students about civil use
of shared academic-computing facilities only when they misbehave, we
must find ways to educate students at the outset. Currently we provide
materials on proper use when students open accounts, and our
introductory training sessions emphasize the theme, but neither of
these traditional approaches seems to have much effect. Occasionally
we work more intensively with specific groups, such as our own user
consultants-in-training, and here we have found that discussion of
real cases works very well. Fundamentally, what we need is two things:
for students to understand their basic social and ethical obligations
as members of a community, and for them to understand the implications
of these obligations when they use computers and networks.
Promoting civility on the academic network requires moving our goal
beyond adjudication to behavioral change and our tactics beyond
accusation to redirection. Having achieved these two transitions, we
need to move from remedial to preventive strategies if we are to
realize the full potential of networked academic communities. Last
modified 10/12/94 gaj